


The Better From A Distance Job

by sergeant_angel



Series: This Is What Kate Bishop Does When She's Not Being A P.I. [2]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Crack, Gen, Marvel/Leverage fusion, Multi, Plot What Plot, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_angel/pseuds/sergeant_angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate's just trying to keep the hired guns out of Clint's building. She doesn't have time for new friends.</p><p>Eliot's just trying to do a guy a solid, dammit, Hardison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better From A Distance Job

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say for myself.  
> Also, this fic refused to have a plot.  
> Takes place a year or so after the Leverage finale and about a month after the events of CA:TWS.  
> (If you're reading my daredevil fic, Nazar, I would encourage you to read Ch. 13 before reading this)

“Barton, open up!” someone bangs on the door. “It’s Spencer, man, we need to talk.”

Not another one, Jesus. This is getting old. Kate opens the door but keeps the three chains on—mostly for show, anyone who is sufficiently motivated to get in won’t be deterred by them--

“Who are you?”

“Who are _you_?” the man growls at her, which, calm down, dude.

“My apartment. You answer first.”

“Well, unless your name is Clint Barton, no, this _isn’t_ your apartment.”

She narrows her eyes at the man. A little scruffy, hair recently cut but still shaggy, central-southern accent, shorter, holds himself like ex-military.

“How much?” she asks, earning a confused look from him.

“What?”

“How much? How much are you getting paid to take Barton out?”

“How much are _you_ getting paid?” he counters.

“So we’re nine, then? You’re just going to repeat all of my questions, is that it? I mean, look, ex-military, callused hands, lots of muscle, you checked sight lines as soon as I opened to door and you keep scanning the hallway. You're here because someone offered you a lot of money to kill Clint Barton, so let me make this easy for you. However much you’re getting paid? It’s not enough. You have a choice to make right now: you can walk away with your life, and _not_ get paid, or you can attempt to get paid and spend the rest of your life hooked up to a breathing machine. I’m flexible. Take your pick.”

“I’d like to see you try, sweetheart,” he glowers.

Kate continues to glare at him through the sliver of open door. He doesn't make a move towards her, which is surprising-- usually whoever's trying to kill-kill-bang-bang makes a go of the door right off.

But this guy...there’s something about him she can’t put her finger on. “Wait, Spencer? Not _Eliot_ Spencer?”

“Yeah,” he squints at her a little. “Wait, aren’t you—“

“Kate, yeah, we talked on the phone once or twice,” she nods, glad that she’s placed him.

“Yeah,” he nods back, recognition dawning over his face, which is nice, it makes him seem about ten percent less terrifying. “Yeah, with the book forgery a year ago. I remember. And then that thing where you talked me through that senator’s house.”

“You here to kill me?” she asks after they stare at each other for another minute, sizing the other up.

He shakes his head.

“Well, what the hell. It’s been a boring day anyway. Gimme a sec,” _gimmie a sex_ the thinks, almost giggling, then frowning because she misses her Clint Trash Monster. Kate shuts the door and unlocks it for real, taking a second to disarm the knockout spray she’d installed around the doorframe. “Come on in,” she steps aside and ushers him in to Clint’s apartment. "You worked with him, back in the day, right? His pre-SHIELD days,” she keeps a solid five feet between them as Eliot Spencer enters the apartment.

“Yeah, I did,” he paces the living room, checking sightlines and occasionally running his hands over furniture, checking for bugs, maybe. “You’re Hawkeye too, right?”

She nods.

“That hit’s out on you too.”

“So you are here to kill me?”

“Dammit--no, for the last—no. I’m not here to kill an old friend’s current partner. That’s bad manners at best.” He looks more than a little exasperated.

“Well excuse me for being suspicious, the last five people who’ve knocked on that door have tried to kill me.”

“Five?”

“Yeah, just—hang on,” she shoots Clint a text— _old frnd Eliot Spencer trust y/n?_

 _yes_ comes back almost immediately, followed by _lucky say hi_

“So why are you here?” she heads to the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Green tea?”

“Sure,” Kate rummages around for the tea and the pot, turning on the stove.

“I keep my ear to the ground. I don’t do—what he and I used to do, not anymore, but with everything that happened with SHIELD—I saw there was a hit out on him and decided to pay him a visit. Where is he, anyway?”

“Out of the country,” Kate fishes two clean mugs out of the cupboard. “With the Widow. He’s, a—he’s been kind of a mess since the Battle of New York.”

“I can imagine."

“So how did you know to come here, anyway? This address was never on his SHIELD file; most of the guys banging down the door have been local.”

“I know a guy,” Spencer shrugs.

"I know a guy too. _Everybody_ knows a guy. That doesn't answer the question.”

"A guy on my crew-a hacker-helps us keep tabs on people from our old lives. How they're doing, where they are. When you've done the things I've done," he grimaces a little. "It's a good idea to keep an eye on some people."

"Okay, one: crew? And two, _old lives_?"

"You know some of what Barton did before he became an Avenger," Spencer growls a little. "Which is how he and I met. The rest of my crew--didn't always wind up on the right side of things. We're doing better. We're changing."

"What exactly do you and your crew do, Mr. Spencer?" Kate's not sure she wants to know the answer.

“We,” he swipes his hands over the island counter, “we help people who don’t have the means or the ability to help themselves.”

“That doesn’t sound like Clint. Clint can take care of himself.”

“He’s an old friend. I felt I owed him this.”

"Owed him what, exactly?"

"A few extra hands to discourage folks taking a shot at him."

"Well, I won't deny that having some help would be nice, but to be honest I'm not sure I should trust you. I don't know you, I don't know your crew. I don't know what you've done in the past that landed you on the _wrong_ side of things, or whatever. So I appreciate the offer. I do, but--"

"You have a team, right? Or had, I guess, at this point, right?"

"Yeah," Kate says it slowly, loathe to admit anything when she doesn't know his angle.

"From what I understand, y'all weren't always on what most people would consider the right side of things, either. You work with Clint, which means you probably know the Black Widow, and the pair of them ain't exactly wearing kid gloves. If you don't want to trust us, that's fine. But don't throw that back at me."

Kate narrows her eyes at him, reevaluating the openness of his posture, the easy set of his shoulders.

"You've got someone keeping tabs on you right now, don't you?"

"Psh," he scoffs. "Wouldn't you?"

"Okay. Okay," Kate nods. "Yeah, I could use the help. I have a job that's getting increasingly hard to do because I have to look out for people trying to kill me. What'd you have in mind?"

She can't decide if the smile Eliot Spencer gives her makes him more terrifying or less.

...

“Why is there so much purple?” Parker asks. “And arrows?”

“It’s kind of his thing,” Eliot shrugs.

“Arrows?” Parker repeats.

Eliot shrugs again.

“It’s a very distinctive weapon,” Parker decides, giving him a half-smirk, smacking a kiss to his cheek as she pushes past him.

“Where’s Hardison?”

“Canceling brunch with a friend. He’ll be up in a minute.”

“Sorry,” Kate hops down a few stairs before jumping over the railing. “Was talking to an old friend who’s in the city for a few days—I thought you said you had a crew of three?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Hardison bangs into the apartment. “Just had to reschedule brunch with an old friend—“

He freezes when he sees Kate.

“Uh,” he says.

“What?” says Kate.

Eliot looks between the two of them. “ _Dammit,_ Hardison.”

“What, man, what?”

“ _Hardison_?” Kate looks at him incredulously.

“Hey, girl,” Hardison says rather halfheartedly. “How you been?”

“Wait,” she looks between Hardison and Eliot, then back to Hardison. “ _You’re_ his hacker? You-- _David_ ," she looks like she can't decide if she wants to shake him or hug him, which honestly Eliot can understand.

“Who's David?” Parker calls from the kitchen where she’s helping herself to some cereal.

“You okay with me--?” Hardison looks down at Kate.

“Sure, go,” she shrugs. “They’re your team. _Hardison._ ”

“Kate and I used to work together—well, she ran the team I was on.”

“The team?” Eliot has a sneaking suspicion he isn’t going to like whatever Hardison says next. “The only team I know _Kate Bishop_ being a part of is the _Young Avengers_.”

"The Young Avengers?" Parker freezes with a spoonful of what might be fruity pebbles halfway to her mouth. "Who're they?"

"The hipster Avengers," Hardison is trying and failing to not smile.

"We were the Avengers before the Avengers were the Avengers," Kate finishes.

"Well, kind of," Hardison amends.

"Mostly," Kate adds.

"Think more along the lines of an angry group of teenagers with abilities or special skills fighting low-level crime in New York--"

" _And_ internationally, don't sell us short," Kate cuts in. "And in space."

"And then Tony Stark builds a suit of armor, and Captain Amercia gets thawed, and _suddenly_ SHIELD gets all uppity about independent operators." Hardison ignores Kate, who is giving him a pretty impressive side-eye.

"You started working with us _after_ that happened. How do you know that story?"

"You _tell_ it a lot, you and Eli just, _all the time._ "

"Did you wear spandex?" Parker interrupts what's starting to look like the kind of fight family members have, her head tilted at Hardison in a speculating manner that Eliot isn't entirely comfortable with in front of an almost-stranger.

"Spandex isn't protective during a fight, of _course_ not," Kate scoffs. "We have more sense than that."

"You fought?"

"Only if I had to, mama," Hardison rubs the back of his neck with his hand.

"David's got a giant brain," Kate perches herself on the back of Clint's sofa. "I tried my best to keep him concussion-free."

"Only because you like to keep all the concussions for yourself," Hardison mutters, to which Kate glares and snaps, " _What?"_

"I didn't say anything!"

"That's what I thought," Kate continues to glare.

"This whole time you've known how to fight--really fight?" Eliot's having a hard time wrapping his head around that.

"No--yes?" Hardison sighs. "Sort of?" Just because I know the theory of something doesn't mean I can actually do it. Or _like_ doing it."

“ _Dammit, Hardison_ ,” Eliot doesn’t even bother trying to not say it. “You’re a Young Avenger?”

“Avenger,” Kate interrupts. “We’re really collectively not that much younger than some of the Avengers and they got credit for shit we did. So we’re the Avengers. Though David--sorry, Hardison?--lucked out and joined up with us after we were all assigned our SHIELD babysitters, so he's never been on their radar the way the rest of us were.”

"Hawkeye, even if I _had_ been on their radar, I would have just hacked them and cleared out their data."

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Did you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I thought our files were curiously absent from all of SHIELD's secrets. And this crew," her eyes drift from Eliot to Parker. "You're happy with them? Doing some good with them?"

"Yeah," Hardison's voice gets soft as he holds Kate's gaze. "They're keeping me on the straight and narrow."

She looks like she might be trying not to laugh.

"You know what I mean," he rolls his eyes at her. "They're good for me."

"We're good for each other," Eliot says, crossing his arms over his chest and daring Kate to disagree.

"Living the bisexual dream?" she leans back to look Hardison in the eye.

"Every day, baby," he grins. "Ready to get to work?"

"Hell yeah."

"Right," Parker jumps off the counter. "Before we start, though, what was your name? Your code name? Can you tell us, or will you have to kill us if you do?"

"Prodigy," Kate grins at the three of them, nodding at Hardison. "He's Prodigy."

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened because one day while I was stopped at a light, I thought, "Well, okay, but Eliot Spencer is totally a mutant, right? He for sure knows Clint. Maybe he was part of the Weapon X program? He moves awful fast."  
> And then I thought, well, sure. And David and Hardison are related or something, right? They're both supersmart and bisexual WAIT A MINUTE.


End file.
